The Santiago Boys

This book tells the story of the Santiago Boys, young engineers who attempted to build their own socialist internet at Salvador's request Allende, then newly elected president of Chile. Boldly recruiting a dashing British businessman Stafford Beer's unlikely team designs a computer system for managing the Chilean economy in real time named Cybersyn, as Chile tries to survive the joint assaults of the CIA, tech giant ITT, and local right-wingers. Based on two years of research and more than 200 interviews, this story narrated by Evgeny Morozov sheds light on current debates about new technologies, which he whether it concerns their excesses (surveillance, propaganda and control) or their utopian possibilities.